Author’s First Novel Has a Historical Touch

Local author Rebecca Nieminen could not forget the sad story of Frances Maria Buel, a teenager who was murdered by her stepfather nearly 200 years ago.

Nieminen studied the crime and the short life of the 16-year-old girl who was stabbed to death on her family’s farm in Gustavus Township after rejecting her stepfather’s sexual advances.

After 20 years of research, writing and revisions, Nieminen this month released “The Dance of the White Deer,” her first novel. It is inspired by and loosely based on the tragic story of the teenager.

The novel is Nieminen’s first, and it represents a lifelong goal of hers. She has already written the sequel but has no publication date set.

“The Dance of the White Deer” (262 pages) is self-published and is available as an ebook or a paperback on amazon.com.

“The Dance of the White Deer” is available as an ebook or a paperback on amazon.com.

Nieminen, who is also a professional photographer and holds a master’s degree in English, stressed that while she based her novel on the true story of Buel, her novel is not the same story.

“However, I credit this girl for inspiring me to create my work of fiction,” said the Kinsman resident. “There are threads of her truth in my book, and without learning about her story, I would not have written my novel.”

Maria Frances Buel was murdered in 1832 by her stepfather, Ira Gardner, after she rejected his advances and ran to a neighbor’s home.

Gardner promised not to bother her if she returned home to pick up her clothing, but when she did, he stabbed her in the yard in front of witnesses.

The murder caused a sensation, and Gardner was eventually hanged. The story of Buel’s death is inscribed on her tombstone, which sits in Gustavus Town Hall, although a replica is in the town cemetery.

Nieminen said that in her novel, she also delves into the issues and conditions women faced in everyday life during that era.

She uncovered the story more than a decade ago when writing a “haunted Halloween” story for the original Youngstown Vindicator, where she was working as a reporter.

“I was immediately fascinated and wanted to know more about her tragic life,” she said. “I had long been a serious history buff and had already done a fair amount of research on [pioneer] life in Ohio, so it seemed natural that a novel started taking shape in my mind.”

But Nieminen wasn’t interested in Buel as fodder for a ghost story.

“I was more interested in imagining what it must have been like for a young, vulnerable girl to be stuck under the same roof with this grown man who was attempting to victimize her,” she said. “I felt a deep empathy for her.”

The author’s research uncovered more details about Buel’s life.
“I learned she had been a brunette beauty, and a ‘bastard child,’” the author said. ‘She had a boyfriend who married someone else after the murder and migrated to Indiana.”

Nieminen’s novel is based on two characters she created: 16-year-old Limery Clark and her 19-year-old boyfriend, Aaron Harper.

Aaron comes from an upstanding family and doesn’t comprehend the shameful weight of Limery’s hardscrabble upbringing or the terribleness of her situation as the target of her stepfather’s lust.

The two young lovers marry but the secrets she holds become a burden that cannot be maintained.

Nieminen said she has been interested in the history of the Western Reserve since she was a teen.

“It had always been an interest and a hobby,” she said. “When I wrote about [the Frances Buel story] for The Vindicator, I was in my late 20s. I felt a lot of empathy for her. Even today, if someone is being sexually abused by a family member, it goes under the radar, and it was even more so in those days. Even today, this would be a shocking story, a ‘Dateline’ story.”

The author strove for historical accuracy in capturing the language and everyday rhythms of life in the early 1800s.

“I wanted everything to be as accurate as possible,” she said. “There is a scene where someone is smoking a clay pipe and I thought, ‘wait a minute… how long does it take to do that?’ I would have to research it. I fell down so many rabbit holes like that, one detail after another.”

Nieminen also tried to remain true to the speech patterns of the day. She points out that the word “hello” as a common catch-all greeting did not become common until around 1900.
Challenges in her own life – divorce, raising two children as a single mother – also slowed her writing progress.

She eventually finished the novel and entered it into the 2013 Eludia Award contest, which is geared toward women writers over 40. She was named a top 10 finalist, but did not win the prize, which was publication of the novel.

“I was on a list with women who had [doctoral degrees] in creative writing, attorneys,” she said. “Overall, it was good company to keep. But I didn’t win, and the manuscript got placed on the back burner again. I was busy making ends meet, working, raising my kids.”

It was her son who pushed her to complete the last mile.
“This year, my son asked me, as a birthday present to him, to get the novel out there on Amazon and publish it myself,” she said. ‘I was really touched that he cared enough to want me to do that.”

She was unsure about the perceived credibility of a self-published book and wanted to obtain a “real” publisher. But it’s a tough task for a first-time writer.

“Self-publishing is more respectable now and a lot of authors take that route, so I decided I would do it,” she said.
Nieminen hopes the novel finds its way into the hands of a publisher, who might contact her.

“I figure that I have a better shot of it going somewhere if I get it out there rather than it sitting in my computer and never seeing the light of day,” she said.

KINSMAN — Rebecca Nieminen’s debut novel, “The Dance of the White Deer,” either has been two decades or almost two centuries in the making, depending on how you look at it.

Nieminen, of Kinsman, said the idea for her historical fiction novel was born when she was working on a haunted Halloween series as a young reporter at The Vindicator in Youngstown. She stumbled across the story of 16-year-old Frances Maria Buell of Gustavus, who in 1832 was murdered by her stepfather after she rejected his sexual advances.

“The particulars of the tale read like an episode from a true-crime broadcast,” Nieminen said.

The legend tells that Frances Maria Buell, who went by Maria, ran from her home and took refuge at a neighbor’s house. Her stepfather said that if she came home to collect her belongings, he would leave her alone — but when she returned, he was waiting in the front yard with a butcher knife. The stabbing took place in broad daylight in front of witnesses, Nieminen said.

The story struck Nieminen, who had been a history enthusiast since she was a teen herself and already knew some background about northeast Ohio during that time period.

“I became really intrigued by it, not just as a ghost story, but more just feeling a lot of empathy for the girl and what she must have been going through,” Nieminen said.

Nieminen stressed that her novel is not a recounting of the historical story, though there were elements she wanted to keep.

She started with the question, “What would it have been like in 1832, to be 16 years old and your stepfather is trying to molest you? I mean, in modern society, we have problems talking about sexual abuse and there’s just a whole cloud of silence.”

One hundred ninety years ago, when the topic was even more taboo, it must have been “suffocating and unbearable,” for a young girl, she said.

From that question, Nieminen took her fictional protagonist, 16-year-old Limery Clark, in a different direction than the real-life Frances Maria Buell.

“Nineteen-year-old Aaron Harper is instantly smitten the first time he meets 16-year-old Limery Clark,” reads the summary for “The Dance of the White Deer.” “But Aaron, who comes from a fine, upstanding family, doesn’t comprehend the shameful weight of Limery’s hardscrabble upbringing or the terrible urgency of her present situation. She has become the object of her stepfather’s sexual desires.”

Nieminen said in creating the story, which is set in the 1820s, she wanted to explore women’s issues of the time. She examines the differences between healthy and unhealthy marriages, stronger and weaker characters and how religion can be used for good or bad.

She said some of the women’s issues highlighted in “The Dance of the White Deer” still resonate today.

“I think there’s an overlap definitely with issues today and the ways that things have gotten better and the ways that things still need to get better,” Nieminen said.

RESEARCH AND REWRITES

Taking “The Dance of the White Deer,” from idea to manuscript was an undertaking that involved copious research and about two decades.

A 2013 version of the manuscript was among the top 10 contenders for the Eludia Award, an award through the nonprofit Poets & Writers that publishes a first book of fiction by a winning woman over the age of 40.

While Nieminen didn’t end up winning, she said she was “keeping good company” among the other women on the list.

When Nieminen’s son, Ethan Sloan, turned 17 in June, his birthday request was for Nieminen to self-publish “The Dance of the White Deer.”

“I guess I sort of had it in my head that if you don’t go through the traditional route and get a publisher to accept you, what you produce isn’t enough — which is not true,” Nieminen said.

Nieminen also turned 50 this year and figured, “If you don’t get off your horse and do this, you’re never going to get there.” With the help of Sloan, Nieminen published the book through the online retailer Amazon on Aug. 1. It is available in paperback and on Kindle.

“Getting it out there felt surprisingly vulnerable, because even though it’s a work of fiction, it’s something that came out of my mind and came out of my heart and soul,” Nieminen said.

Nieminen, a professional photographer, designed the cover of the book herself, using a photo she took of a deer and a photo she found on eBay of a young girl. The girl is not Maria Buell — in fact, Nieminen doesn’t know who she is, but she believes the photo was probably taken in the 1870s. Nieminen altered the girl’s clothing to make them fit the earlier time period in which her story is set.

The title pays homage to an albino deer that runs, literally and figuratively, through the novel, Nieminen said. The deer fittingly is meant to represent purity and goodness — and spends much of the story being hunted.

VISITING HISTORY

Nieminen has visited Maria’s grave in East Gustavus Cemetery, where a replica headstone chronicles the story of her demise. The original headstone was removed and placed in Gustavus Town Hall after repeated vandalism, Nieminen said.

History tells that Maria’s stepfather, Ira Gardner, was put on trial in Warren, convicted and hung in a spectacle that drew a crowd of people from all over Ohio.

Gardner was later buried in field in Williamsfield because the townspeople would not let his brother bury him in Kinsman. No one knows the exact location of his grave.

According to legend, Buell had a boyfriend who remembered her by planting an oak tree by her grave, though the tree is long gone. Nieminen’s research shows that after Buell’s death, the young man got married and moved to Indiana.

As for Nieminen, she intends to keep writing. “The Dance of the White Deer” already has a sequel in the works, because an early version of the story was so long that she was compelled to split it in half.

She hopes to write more historical fiction stories, as well as some that take place in modern times.

She encourages other writers to consider self-publishing, because it provides the option of complete control and gets the work out into the world.

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